Or something like that.
Someone mentioned this video in a downstairs thread. Here’s an explanation from someone who studies such things.
A number of things about this are concerning. Paula White-Cain is an advisor to the President of the United States. The emphasis on evil spirits is bizarre and seems to me to indicate some disorder of psychology. The level of hate for the entire world – the seas, the animal world, human reproduction, is over the top.
The mitigating factor looks like she’s not getting much response from her audience. But they are there. We can hope that the lecture was assigned to a class on abnormal psychology.
But let’s hear from Ms. White-Cain herself:
Open Thread!
bemused senior
I have been wishing someone will rediscover the Barnhouse effect, because it will take dynamopsychism to clear up all the craziness. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S2DwvoAdWmc
MisterForkbeard
“That thing that I clearly said is obviously not what I said” is popular in the right wing, as is the “The left didnt actually say this thing but THEY TOTALLY DID”.
In both cases, it’s accepted credulously by the media.
Josie
This stuff is beyond weird. How can people fall for this shit?
MattF
Well, the SNL cold open is on-topic:
https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/26/21082268/snl-cold-open-trump-legal-team-alan-dershowitz
Gravenstone
Fucklng coocooforcocoapuffs whackaloons, these folks.
AJ
I think it was dengre who wrote a great piece illustrating that Right wing base engagement is best understood as the continuation of mail order scams.
Also if anyone else was lazy like me and has the means to chip in for site redesign and server costs, I finally got around to it and can recommend it!
Major Major Major Major
This reminds me, I need to watch the new season of Sabrina.
Baud
Now I wish we still had Marianne Williamson around to counter this.
Brachiator
This Paula White-Cain is a presidential spiritual advisor? WTF??
Tehanu
Would the exclamation “Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick!” be appropriate here?
Baud
I wonder if Paula White-Cain is responsible for what happened to the pet calendar.
Keithly
@Baud: Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to!
Baud
As president, I will protect and defend a woman’s right to choose to end her satanic pregnancies.
Baud! 2020!: Demons Hate Him!
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: Yes. Unless there’s another one running around and that would be, at least, one Paula White-Cain too many!
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: That would have to be the Satanic Paula White-Cain!
debbie
Whatever it is, it’s decidedly not pro-life.
mrmoshpotato
Satanic wombs?
Soooooo,…..Satan can give birth? Aaaaaannddddd who’s banging Satan?!?!
ETA – also “wombs.” Satan has litters?
encephalopath
Water sports? What do they have against water sports?
gene108
Shortly before she gets to the satanic pregnancies part, she invokes Jesus to protect Donald Trump, then herself, and remembers to include the audience in this prayer for protection.
It’s like these whack jobs have developed their own secret coded language only those initiated in their order can understand
MisterForkbeard
@mrmoshpotato: Paula White wants to know who Satan is cheating on her with.
Baud
@debbie: It’s not pro-choice either.
Nicole
I used to have a few of these sort of Christians in my life. They believe this shit. They really do. Probably because Satan gives them an out for taking responsibility for their own lives, but as I am glad to have aborted those particular relationships, I can’t say for sure.
Adam L Silverman
This is a hallmark of the hard core 5 point Calvinists that ties directly back to Luther. And was a major theological break with Catholicism and Anglicanism. While Catholic and Anglican theology recognize that the natural world can be dangerous and corrupting, rooted in the doctrine of Original Sin, they also recognize that it is G-d’s creation and can be inspiring, majestic, beautiful. Luther, however, rejected that. For Luther, and then his most hard core theological and dogmatic descendants, nature was irredeemably corrupted because of Original Sin. It was not majestic or beautiful and couldn’t be inspiring. It could only be dangerous and corrupting to those who had been saved. Scholars of Luther tend to root this in Luther’s fear of thunderstorms, which Luther credits with his entering Catholic holy orders. He made a deal with G-d that if the Deity saw him through a thunderstorm he’d been caught outdoors in and saw him to safety, he’d dedicate his life to G-d. The Calvinist reification of pre-determinism just made this worse, which is why the Puritans did and the hardcore Knoxian Presbyterians still do (think the Wee Free Kirk of Scotland, motto: “We’re doomed! Doomed! Dinna pick the berries!!!! We’re doomed!!!!!! – and I’m not making this up, I actually had a wee freer preach it at me when I lived in Scotland) understand the world as dangerous and corrupting. It also leads to exceedingly extreme versions of the long standing Christian theological conundrum, which is how to be in the world (alive), while not of the world (because one has accepted Jesus as Christ and is saved and now a member of the Kingdom of Heaven).
What White-Cain and her fellow travelers have done is simply modernize this, weaponize it against their enemies, and monetize it to line their pockets.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: This is likely the plot of the next Jordan Peele body horror movie.
Adam L Silverman
@mrmoshpotato:
mrmoshpotato
@MisterForkbeard: Praying that any plans to hurt people not prevail in your life?
Paula, you don’t have to pray for that. Just go tell Dump to stop being an asshole.
Adam L Silverman
@gene108: Remember, for Paual White-Cain, everyone who doesn’t support the President is satanic/under Satan’s influence. That’s why so many people find what she said offensive and despite the accurate theological explainer Cheryl posted, don’t buy that as an explanation.
Ruckus
@Josie:
Some people are susceptible to the smell of bullshit and will pay top dollar for it. This crap has been going on in “religion” for centuries. It’s just that total populations have gotten big enough that the instigators can have a largish following now. Some people are looking for explanations of things that they can’t see and here’s someone telling them the “answers” in a way that overpowers their common sense – which would be more common if more people had some.
The principle is the same for the republican party, it doesn’t matter what the line of bullshit is, they are consistent in it, repeating it, getting pissed that people question it and them. Racism is a part of this as well, it’s total bullshit but it’s repeated and repeated and forcefully as well. And that develops history, a story, acceptance of it’s value.
This woman screams this bullshit at people and sounds authoritative, so people listen. Notice I didn’t say think, that’s not part of the process, thinking is the antithesis of this process and is why people who actually think about what they are told know this is total, and undeniable bullfuckingshit.
Does this sound familiar about one of the candidates on the left? It should.
Gravenstone
@Cheryl Rofer: Does she have Spock’s beard?
Martin
Not certain, but email activity suggests that there’s probably a coronavirus infected person at my work. CDC confirmed one in my county.
A Ghost To Most
The longest con in the history of man goes on. Eventually the virus will kill the host.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
Who is Paula White-Abel working for?
I will give Trump this. He knows what kind of associates will complement his grift with his base.
retiredeng
Allrighty then.
Jeffro
All I know is that Paula White is excused for whatever she said because
a) she says she didn’t say it
b) Steve Scalise was shot by a lefty
QED, libtards!
I wanna be crazy like the RWNJs, just for a day . It must be so soothing to have no need for logic, at all, about anything.
now…pass me some more of those tire rims and anthrax! ?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So basically the God Botherors now are scared the gay dolphins are going to come rape them and give them Teh’ gay virus the next time they go swimming and naturally Donny the Dumbass buys into this. Brave idiots.
Chief Oshkosh
@Adam L Silverman:
I’ve been told a couple of times by people at work that I am in this world, but not of it. They meant it as a compliment, as in “you do you well, even when you’re swimming the rest of us fish.”
The reality is, I give off that vibe because I fundamentally don’t give shit. Being “of the world” takes too much effort.
JAFD
Irregardless…
Best wishes for a happy Lunar New Year, Australia Day, and Mozart’s Birthday ( tomorrow) to all yon jackals, jackalettes, and anyone else reading this !
Have cardiologist’s appointment tomorrow. Probably going to tell me when to show up so they can put a defibrillator in my chest.
Also got summons to show up on March 2nd for jury duty.
Fun fun fun…
Josie
@Ruckus:
It has been a painful realization for me how many people in our country are susceptible to such beliefs. Prior to this election and administration, I would not have believed the number to be so large. It frightens me for our children and grandchildren.
WaterGirl
Not your usual Sunday fare, even for Balloon Juice! No one can say the we don’t mix it up here.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
So it’s their belief that even the natural world is of the devil? I just don’t understand that.
trollhattan
Must be amazing to be in a room with Miller and this Trixie at the same time.
JPL
Someone needs to ask the person who knows the bible better than anyone else, what the hell she is talking about. I’m waiting for trump to explain it, and until that happens, I’ll gladly ignore her.
Chetan Murthy
Signs of progress! Once upon a time, whom she was married to would have been news. Today? Nopes. I vaguely remembered she was married to someone sorta famous. But nothing else. So I had to look it up, to see that she’s married to some guy from the band Journey. Which, back in the day, was one of my favorite bands, but bqhatevwr [sic]. Still can’t be arsed to remember the guy’s name, and besides, she’s waaaaay more famous, and for her works (spit), not her looks.
Progress!
Just Chuck
Commanding God to abort pregnancies … the hypocrisy of these people has more layers than baklava.
mrmoshpotato
@MisterForkbeard: Paula White is in a lesbian relationship with Satan?!
The plot thickens!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Adam L Silverman: yes, the whole TULIP thing. Basically everyone and everyone is hellbound sinners, God, for own His reason, chooses varies people save, don’t ask why. So the Chosen Elect can shit on everyone else because they are special.
This is why the Evangelicals can dismiss someone like Obama as not “authentic” (you see Obama is only doing good things because Obama selfishly doesn’t want to go to hell) while seeing scum like Trump as the New Messiah, because Jesus said so, and Jesus is all powerful, that’s why.
http://www.prca.org/pamphlets/pamphlet_41.html
Not sure of the appeal of this belief, if perfection if spending eternity with rapists and conmen I would think the oblivion of death would be much more preferable. I mean they make Heaven sound like a prison movie.
CaseyL
This is how they justify destroying ecosystems: it’s not GCC, it’s waging war against evil spirits.
Which makes me think that the wuhan virus is another attempt by Mother Nature to get rid of humanity. I can’t say I blame Her, but if She is accepting suggestions, how about simply rendering all humans infertile? That would work, and incur less suffering.
Adam L Silverman
@Chief Oshkosh: I far prefer the Taoist and Chan/Zen conundrum of mushin: mind of no mind.
The Lodger
@mrmoshpotato: George Conway, obviously.
rikyrah
gene108
@Adam L Silverman:
I just snickered at that part. You can see it in her face and hear it her voice, as she pauses for a split second, with I imagine the thought bubble of “shit, gotta include the rest these guys or one of ’em might stop donating”.
Praying for the protection of her flock really was an afterthought
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: The “classic bride of Satan rite.”
Classic!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This gets into things you are not supposed to say out-loud;
What is Satan? An Angel
What is an Angel? And extension of God.
That logically means Satan is God’s sockpuppet.
So basically God hates everyone because we aren’t perfect. Even though God created us. So God goes Cosplays a Satan to create this suckful world to torture us and temp us into gay sex with manatees and the like.
I am not being absurd here unfortunately.
WaterGirl
@Just Chuck:
God: “You’re not the boss of me.”
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: They do. Not that it was created that way, but because of Eve’s interaction with the serpent in Eden, with the serpent being understood as Satan, that through Eve’s “original” sin all of creation was corrupted. And, since only humans can be saved, the world cannot. It is irredeemably corrupt, corrupting, and dangerous. When you add the Calvinist pre-determinism twist, that only a tiny fraction of humans who have accepted Jesus as Christ and savior can actually be saved in doing so and that that infinitesimally small percentage was determined by G-d before anyone was ever born, it means that one has to deny all things of the world because while you may not be able to ensure you get into Heaven because of pre-determinism, if you are one of the lucky few who are pre-determined, you can get yourself out of your salvation if you give into worldly temptation. Calvin’s theology on this makes no sense as theology. It makes great sense as a religiously based justification for social control.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Actually Adam is “a tiny faction of humans about been created to accept Jesus as Savior” there is no free will in this. That’s why Donald Trump’s actions don’t matter to them. In their mind Trump has been Saved by God, so Trump could kill a child and eat the corpse on 5th Avenue and it wouldn’t matter.
James E Powell
@AJ:
I’m always reminded of
pyramidmulti-level marketing schemes. And it is quite often the same people.Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I don’t know that Trump has been saved by God. Some believe that he is a flawed vessel selected by God to clean up America.
Another Scott
Rainbows are so wicked and perverted, also too:
The well of hateful stupidity has no bottom.
In other, other news…
Yup.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: Wouldn’t that mean that Satan created the Earth? (Why am I even asking?)
mrmoshpotato
@Just Chuck: 1. You leave baklava out of this. 2. Now I want some baklava.
Josie
@Amir Khalid:
See, there you go again, trying to be logical.
lahke
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think that’s where The Good Place is going.
Adam L Silverman
@mrmoshpotato: Courtesy of Marv Wolfman!
scav
The Gnostics are proof that Christianity (or Christianities) has had issues with the material world since forever. They just ascribed the creation of the material world to a separate god, that evil demiurge that trapped us in physical bodies.
Adam L Silverman
@mrmoshpotato:
http://shatila.com/blog/
Cheryl Rofer
@Amir Khalid: I think it’s more that there are evil spirits lurking out there, waiting to do the faithful damage. There may be good as well in their Manicheaen worldview, there has to be, but you can’t tell it from the evil. So BEWARE! And pray the evil away!
mrmoshpotato
@Another Scott:
There are orthodox signals about female sexuality?
NotMax
With appropriate apologies to E. M. Forster, could one state what she’s obsessed with is a womb with a pew?
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: There are more local sources to be had.
(And now I also want a shawarma pita.)
hitchhiker
More and more I think the only rational response to any of this is laughter. Imagine if every time one of these fools dared to spout absolute horseshit in public, whoever was within earshot just burst out laughing and didn’t stop for five minutes.
Guffaws. Eye-wiping. Snorting. Head thrown back delight!
Years ago I read about how groups of people in India would form “laughing clubs” where all they’d do is hang out and laugh together for half an hour. No jokes necessary — just someone would start laughing, and because it’s contagious, very quickly the whole group would be gasping for breath and holding their stomachs.
At dinner I described this to our (then grade school age) daughters, and we tried it, right there over the meatloaf. It really does work. Once you start, it just gets funnier and funnier.
We’re faced ever single day with nonsense to blatant that there’s no other way to greet it … and omg, I’d love to see trump confronted with incoherent giggling when he’s in the midst of his unforgivably stupid lies.
Cheryl Rofer
I see that Adam has given a slightly different and more theologically orthodox answer than I did. I’m going by her words and the interpretation in the tweets I posted. They come down to something very similar, though.
Adam L Silverman
Shall we check in with Denise, who was at Meghan’s wedding?
trollhattan
From the Is Water Wet? files, will Trump threaten NPR to defend Pompeo?
You know the answer.
Losing that 1% funding would be brutal, but one supposes the long game would be killing their non-profit tax status.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: I’m reminded of learning in school that there was this very common belief that once you knew the name of something, then by saying the name you had some control over it.
“Get thee behind me Satan!!” – Todd Rundgren
Anyway, the idea that some being that could create the universe out of nothing, answer our prayers, smite our enemies, enable our bet to cover the point spread, etc., etc., would be controlled by us simply saying its name never, ever made any sense to me – even as a child. But I’m too literal, I guess…
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheryl Rofer
@hitchhiker: Totally agree.
Adam L Silverman
@mrmoshpotato: That is some of the best baklava. When my Kuwaiti student at USAWC wanted baklava, that’s where he’d order it from.
Jake Gibson
The relationship between this and early Christianity is a little like the relationship between Adam Smith and Hayek/von Mises/Friedman.
They take Paul’s self-loathing and crank it up to absurd levels.
Mathguy
@mrmoshpotato: Saddam Hussein. Didn’t you see South Park?
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Well, in pre-Copernican terms the universe revolves around the Earth, with Hell at the center of the Earth, making it technically the true center of the universe, essential as a pivot point otherwise the universe could not function.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Uhhh. Would ask if there’s a critters version of NAMBLA but I 1. don’t want to know and 2. suspect we all know the answer.
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: What the hell is Denise responding to?
mrmoshpotato
@Another Scott: “Get thee behind me Satan (and embrace me in a sensual manner)!!” – Todd Rundgren
Ruckus
@Josie:
It’s not just our country, it is humanity. People want answers to questions that rationally can not be answered in the way they are asked. And other people are willing to answer those questions with made up information, because those people don’t have the answer either.
Some people don’t question things that can not be answered or at least understand when they don’t find actual answers. Religion, all of it, was intended to answer questions that could not be answered, at the time. Many of those questions have been reasonably answered but only in the last most brief segment of history, as we learned how to see better. Take glasses for example. If you need glasses to read, how did you do that, either before glasses or their production was here? And how did you read before the advent of the quill pen or whatever else was available before that? Before paper? We see pictures on walls but what about the alphabet, common usage of language, language itself with definition of words, education of usage? The world has changed dramatically over the last few hundred years and even more so over the last couple hundred with mass technology. Think phones, common communications. In my lifetime phones were not all that common, and connected only by a wire and mechanical switches, now we carry a computer in our hands, with color and movies that we can pull out of the air around us. That’s 70 yrs of development. The computer we are communicating on, the entire system didn’t exist what 50 yrs ago? That’s nothing in overall time.
The point is that the world is changing and that scares the hell out of some people. And other people are taking advantage of that. We just lucked out because one of the people who is too dumb to be scared is trump along with the remains of the republican party, who want things to be conserved at some time in the past when they didn’t have to think about change, when they didn’t have to think where they fit in, where everyone else fit into their magic fairy tail of life. And change was slow, so they could figure it out and where the people that had figured it out could take advantage of that because being that smart they deserved it. Their betters. That’s not the world we live in any longer, change is overnight now, change is the new now. And people that can’t accept that, understand that, are fighting back against change and people that they don’t believe should be ahead of them, actually being ahead of them.
mrmoshpotato
@Mathguy: LOL I vaguely remember that episode.
The Pale Scot
@Adam L Silverman: Well the further north you go the more likely that’s considered claptrap.
As the Parish of Dunkeld stories.
It’s snowing, sleeting, galing and hailing out, so we can track the road gritters going about, my favorite is Gangster Granny Gritter
cleek
@Another Scott:
it gets better:
“conservative” religionist Red Dreher got hisself sued over this:
http://ok-cleek.com/blogs/?p=29909
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: https://youtu.be/msDcShv_r20
NotMax
@Another Scott
Jewmongous, My Pact with Satan.
:)
MomSense
WTAF.
The Pale Scot
@Adam L Silverman:
What is “Spiritual Warfare” for How the World is Likely to End Alex
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
Same here.
Another Scott
@cleek: Thanks.
I hope the family (and the court) makes an example of everyone who is putting their child through this…
Cheers,
Scott.
cckids
@Just Chuck:
Imagine being in that audience/watching this as a pregnant woman, then later having a miscarriage. The ridiculous evil of these people . . .
jonas
@mrmoshpotato:There are orthodox signals about female sexuality?
A modest prairie dress down to the ankles and a hair bonnet. See fashion, Amish contributions to.
frosty
@Another Scott:
Doesn’t work with Beetlejuice (don’t say it 2 more times!!)
Ruckus
@hitchhiker
Tried to link to the green shirt laughing guy but it put in my email address somehow so go look up green shirt laughing guy.
Another Scott
@NotMax: Excellent! :-D
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Major Major Major Major: There is no way Melissa Joan Hart can still pass as a teen even if she’s playing a witch. ?
Princess Leia
OMG Kobe Bryant RIP
Jake Gibson
@Chief Oshkosh:
I remember “in the world, but not of the world” from my youth. I had always taken it as the Evangelicals excuse for opposing social gospel.
The rise of the religious right confirmed and refuted that at the same time. They were perfectly happy to get involved in right wing issues.
delk
Wow RIP Kobe Bryant
mrmoshpotato
@jonas: See Halloween costumes, Sexy Amish.
Baud
For the record, I would vote for Satan over Trump.
West of the Rockies
I never thought Bill Russell would outlive Kobe.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Rumpelstiltskin (based on stories 4,000 years old). Mr. Mxyzptlk. Beetlejuice. Characters invoked or controlled by saying their name, a very common and powerful theme in human culture.
The power of names. The power to name. I wonder who was the first early human to say, “My name is …”
It’s probably on a cave wall somewhere.
Jake Gibson
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I remember a discussion at work between two who were different flavors of Baptist. Born again vs once saved always saved. One being the traditional view of redemption the later a twisted branch off the Calvinist tree.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Baud! 2020! – Would Vote For Satan!
Baud
@delk:
Whoa. What happened?
delk
@Baud: helicopter crash
JPL
@delk: Just was notified about that.
MomSense
@Baud:
Helicopter crash
JPL
@delk: Just was notified about that.
@Baud: Helicopter crash
PIGL
@CaseyL: At this point it wouldn’t work fast enough. It’s a nice idea though just too little too late.
JPL
Kobe Bryant was only 41
cain
@Baud: This is unfortunate timing ;)
Baud fights bad posture.
JPL
From TMZ
cain
shit.. huge loss. Kobe was an amazing player. I can’t believe he died in a helicopter accident. Ugh.
Brachiator
@Princess Leia:
Wait. What?
Has this been confirmed?
The Pale Scot
@Adam L Silverman:
“no-mindness”?
Any decent scotch will du th’t fer ya.
geg6
@Princess Leia:
I just got that notification on my phone. Helicopter crash. Wow.
rikyrah
Kobe Bryant dead at the age of 41???
Another Scott
@Jake Gibson:
Obligatory – Emo Phillips – Golden Gate Bridge (4:15)
You’re welcome!
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Great brief dissection of this perverted take on Christian teaching. Thanks.
I met my first Calvinist in freshman English in Carlisle Pa, we went to a movie and out for a milkshake after, when she educated me on predestination. It was our only date. It was new horrible theology to this U-U raised country boy.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Seems like a positive choice.
Jake Gibson
@A Ghost To Most:
The greatest long con ever inventor.
In what other scam do the marks eagerly raise their children to follow in their footsteps.
JPL
RIP to the others who were in the helicopter crash, also.
LongHairedWeirdo
Oh, so *now* the right-wing thinks we should pay attention to context?
The Pale Scot
@scav: In the schemes of Abrahamic theosophy I always figured the Pelagian Heresy was the the only rational way to go.
The satan made me do it I accept Hesus as my personal savior AGAIN for the umpteenth time is so ridiculous. Better to do the fast for 24 hours and the account is zeroed out for the year
Jake Gibson
@JPL:
I’m so old I can remember Kobe’s dad playing for LaSalle against my Alma Mater.
Kobe probably should be in the HOF but should not be included in any discussion of the GOAT. Not even the Lakers’ GOAT.
Mary G
@mrmoshpotato: There’s a new version with the girl who played Don Draper’s daughter on Mad Men, who is young.
@Ruckus: This! I enjoy your comments so much because you say what I have sort of been thinking but clarifying them.
@cleek: Go rainbow family! Dreher is dreadful.
Cheryl and Adam, thanks for the explanations of the crazy. I could not listen to the clips, because seeing the young women listening to the “minister” sway like zombies was horrifying.
Martin
Isn’t that pretty much what all organized religion has devolved to?
Felanius Kootea
Just found out about Kobe Bryant from someone in my building. I still can’t believe it. It’s so weird when someone younger than you dies. My heart goes out to his family – he has a daughter that’s not even a year old yet :(.
PsiFighter37
Cannot believe Kobe is gone. Only 41 years old. Terribly sad for his wife and his kids. RIP.
CaseyL
The thing I have never understood about fundamentalist/Bible literalist theologies is the extremely small and cramped view of the cosmos they espouse.
The universe – hell, just this planet – is so much more fascinating, beautiful, inspiring, and wondrous than their theology claims.
I can sort of understand believing in it if you’re born to it – I’ve heard stories about how they condition things like curiosity out of their kids from the time they’re born – but how anyone not indoctrinated into it from birth could believe such sheer small-minded boringness as The Will of God quite escapes me.
Their Heaven doesn’t sound like much of anything, either. In fact I have no idea what goes on there, other than singing God’s praises for all of eternity – which sounds pretty much like Hell to me. (At least Mormons have an afterlife where you get to Do Stuff, even if the Stuff you Do sounds kind of dreadful, unless you’re a megalomaniac.)
Suzanne
I am so sad about Kobe.
Just an absolutely incredible talent. Beautiful to watch.
Frankensteinbeck
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I assure you that the percentage of dolphins that are gay and want to rape them is quite high. Dolphins are not merely friendly, they are TOO friendly.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
On the contrary. The meaning of Satan’s existence vis-a-vis God’s omnipotence has been one of the biggest theological debates throughout Christian history. What you’re not supposed to do is choose the wrong answer, with ‘right answer’ defined by the religious authority that has the power to execute you for heresy at the time and place you live.
Wag
@cleek:
I hope that she’s suing for the now obligatory default RWNJ amount of $50 million.
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator:
Pretty sure it was Slim Shady.
JPL
@Jake Gibson: That’s a great thing to remember though.
Central Planning
@delk: that’s why I would never ride in a helicopter. See also Stevie Ray Vaughn and Vic Morrow.
Yutsano
@Adam L Silverman: I gained 5 pounds just from looking at their website. And if I had the money I would order everything.
Brachiator
@Felanius Kootea:
Just found out about Kobe Bryant from someone in my building. I still can’t believe it. It’s so weird when someone younger than you dies. My heart goes out to his family – he has a daughter that’s not even a year old yet :(.
It is sad to see his Wikipedia entry go from “Kobe Bryant is an American professional basketball player” to “Kobe Bryant was an American professional basketball player.”
Raven Onthill
Gee, I didn’t know that the Republican time machine could take us back to the middle ages.
As I understand it, religious beliefs, even quite bizarre religious beliefs, are not accounted among psychological disorders (I’ve spent time with the DSM-5 lately.) Clinical psychology recognizes a list of disorders and weird religious beliefs aren’t among them. However, they can be part of a diagnosable disorder.
The Pale Scot
@cleek: But.. But.. I’m a cheerleader!!
Gin & Tonic
@Jake Gibson:
Obligatory.
mrmoshpotato
@Wag: Hahaha, well played.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
Did you ever read Channing’s Moral Argument Against Calvinism? I think you would find a kinship with Channing. He was brilliant.
Just Chuck
Satanic Wombs would make an awesome metal band name.
janesays
@Jake Gibson: He’s the Derek Jeter of basketball, talent-wise. Definitely in the upper eschelon (first ballot HOFer), but nowhere near the GOATs.
Jim
Paula – just a scamvangelist .
joel hanes
@Josie:
Back in the Pleistocene when I attended one of our Great Land-Grant State Institutions of Higher Learning, the largest student organization was Campus Crusade for Christ. At that time, CCfC was explicitly young-earth creationist. (and that was their big issue. The Protestant anti-abortion thing didn’t start until 1979, with the founding of the “Moral Majority”)
There was a guy in my physical anthro class who knew, _knew_ that male skeletons had one less rib than female skeletons, because Adam. He was pretty upset when the professor invited him to see for himself, using the mounted skeletons at the front of the classroom. I believe he dropped the class shortly thereafter.
joel hanes
@scav:
evil demiurge that trapped us in physical bodies
L. Ron Hubbard borrowed this for Scientology’s Operating Thetan gnosis, in which galactic tyrant Xenu and his psych-manipulating henchaliens have fooled your immortal thetan into thinking it has a physical body. According to the OT stuff, what you think is your body is actually an accumulation of the dormant spirits of dead space aliens. Scientologists must pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to receive this secret teaching.
This seems no more weird to me than Ms. White-Cain’s ravings (at least, Ms. White-Cain did not require a large payment up front before she would share her delusions with her audience.)
NotMax
@joel hanes
Kinky.
Upright makes general observation and study less difficult.
evodevo
@gene108: Yes, yes they have…it has been in development ever since the Sixties, and if you aren’t up on the vocabulary, you will miss a lot of their hidden meanings….Trumpy is fed these code words and they lace his “speeches” he gives at those nutjob rallies. “Picking judges” “2nd Amendment remedies” etc. But the real vocabulary is that used among fundies with each other…some examples: “spiritual warfare”; “slain in the spirit”; “complementarianism”; “gifts of the spirit”; etc etc. RolltoDisbelieve has a lot of blog posts explaining their lingo
Matt
Hot take: this kind of crap should be treated exactly the same way it would be if the word “Jesus” was everywhere replaced with “Pikachu”. Get the nets and the Thorazine.
Sm*t Cl*de
@AJ:
@AJ:
Sure you are not thinking of Perlstein’s “The Long Con”?
AJ
@Sm*t Cl*de: You are correct, thank you!
I always liked dengre’s writing and wish he were still at it. I must have conflated something of his with this piece.